By Sunwhee Mike Park

SONGDO – The University of Utah Asia Campus’ Career and Internships Development Center (CIDC) hosted a resume and cover letter workshop this past Wednesday, Sept. 19^th which aimed at educating students on writing techniques, tips, and cultural writing differences in order to craft professional-level resumes and CV’s. The workshop was held in one of UAC’s two main lecture halls.

According to Jinnie Park, Assistant Director for the CIDC, there were two main purposes for the workshop. First and foremost was to inform the culturally diverse UAC students on the differences between Korean and American style resume and cover letters and secondly to show the UAC student career ambassadors’ competence in aiding the writing process as well.

“Many UAC alumni who have studied on the Salt Lake City campus reached out to me expressing difficulties finding work in Korea because they didn’t know how to write Korean-style resume…I wanted to make sure that our current students didn’t have this same issue going into the future” explained Park.

The workshop was the product of collaborations between Jinnie Park, Dr. Scott Morris (professor of writing at UAC), and the ten career ambassadors working at the CIDC all of whom began preparing for the workshop one month in advance. Two PowerPoint presentations were created, both in English and Korean, and were kept up to date with constantly changing materials over the preparation period. 

Materials covered included resume writing 1 (a basic introduction to resumes for freshmen and sophomores), resume writing 2 (a more in-depth explanation of resumes for juniors and seniors), career advising, jobs and internships searching, interview preparation, graduate school searching and preparation, and career assessments.

The UAC Career and Internships Development Center was established on April 16^th of this year and has quickly developed into the largest CIDC within IGC (Incheon Global Campus).

Originally operated single-handedly by Jinnie Park, the CIDC has expanded its reach with the help of its career ambassadors. The center has adopted career-search website Handshake which is accessible to all UAC students online and via a mobile app. It has also created its own website and has established relations with renowned organizations such as Edelman and the EAAFP (Easter Asian-Australian Flyway Partnership). The center also has plans to participate in the upcoming IGC career fair.

The career fair will take place on Saturday, Sept. 28^th from 10 A.M to 5 P.M in the IGC gymnasium and small theater. More than 20 corporations will be in attendance in addition to nearly 500 students and alumni. This is the first ever career fair to be hosted at the IGC.

The UAC CIDC plans to hire new staff members, secure more external relations, further train its career ambassadors, and spread UAC’s influence across the country as it moves into the future.

“Many of the students at the UAC are interested in on-campus involvement and leadership roles, but have little knowledge about jobs and life after college” stated Misung Choi, career ambassador and one of two student hosts of the resume workshop. “I’m very happy that we had a bigger turnout than we originally expected, and had lots of participation from students in attendance as well”.

The CIDC has 3 more workshops planned for the remaining semester which are focused on covering job interviews, job seeking for international students, and operating LinkedIn.